Liverpool 0-1 Southampton: In game and Post Match discussion

I said pre match it'll be a difficult game. Teams have figured us out now. We're bloody great when the other team have the ball, we hunt them down in packs and force them into mistakes. Now though, the opposition says why don't you have the ball instead and we will put every man we have behind it. When that happens, we have no answers. All we do is pass sideways for 90 minutes and we don't go anywhere. We have no urgency to our play we aren't moving the ball quickly enough, we aren't creative and we have no plan B either. We're constantly playing it out from the back very very slowly and it's all too predictable and so easy to defend against. By the time our goalie rolls it out the other team have 11 men behind the ball.

Karius - Thought he played very well and made some really good saves. My motm.

TAA - Overall he played quite well, got forward and delivered one or two beauty's into the box too. He was caught out of position a couple of times though and we were lucky not to get punished, if that was Moreno he would have got slaughtered.

Lovren - Didn't do much wrong.

Matip - Same but noticed he lost possession quite a few times which isn't like him, a bit rusty perhaps.

Milner - Seemed jittery in the first 15 mins and made a couple of mistakes but settled and played ok after that.

Henderson - Did nothing for me. Thought he had a poor game.

Can - Surprised to see he has been given some votes because I thought he was poor too. He tracked back once or twice and won the ball back for us but apart from that I thought he was terrible. He slowed our play right down and gave the ball away.

Lallana - Worked the hardest out of the midfield 3.

Firmino - Hardly involved. Thought he had a poor game.

Coutinho - Got on the ball more than Firmino did but didn't create anything. Was unlucky with a 25 yard shot though.

Sturridge - big Sturridge fan and been calling for him to start for ages but thought he was terrible too, he just doesn't look interested. That said, our best chances probably fell to him.

Jürgen - it was evident early on that we were in for yet another frustrating night and we would struggle to find a goal. So tell me, why is Jürgen waiting until 75 mins to bring origi on? And why is he waiting until 85 mins to change our set up to a diamond midfield with wijnaldum?  Thought klopp got it all wrong tonight, has he not learnt anything from the past 4-5 weeks?

We've just blown a golden opportunity to get to Wembley there. Credit to Southampton who played very well in both legs, beat us in both legs, so well done to them I hope they win it. 

The Liverpool can do no wrong brigade will probably come on and say we should have had 9 penalties and our passing stats were 98.7% accurate or whatever, but the truth of the matter is we were sh*t once again. Tonight was identical to our previous 6 or 7 games.

Very disappointed.

Yup.

Frustrating as F**k.

My memory is sh*te and I am pissed as a fart mate but didn't we do okay at the 'getting rid' part of the rebuilding bit last Summer?

In comparison to the other part?

I'll be honest here.

I'm not sure what I was on about there.

Lesson - don't drink and forum kids.

Hic...

Is it true this is the first time we've lost both legs of a League Cup tie and also first time failing to score in either leg?

sad watching sturridge chasing that ball in front of the kop. reminded me of torres. That explosive genius spark just gone.

mad how quickly this has gone. i was at boro away. 2nd half we were outstanding. really thought to myself we could do it. could this finally be the year i witness a title....

whole team seems to have hit the wall. look totally goosed. mentally as much as physically. which is mad. its january. we havent even had europe this season!

iv said it all along. once a couple of inevitable injuries hit, squad nowhere near strong enough.

oh well. still reckon we will beat chelsea.

F***ing bollocks that!

You don't score 180 minutes in a tie no matter how many chances penalty shouts you have you don't deserve to go through.

Key players out of form and a clearly not match fit Coutinho struggling.

Same old same old. Hopes raised, hopes dashed, sorry but its the same sh*t every fecking season.

ONE player determines how we do, that ONE player leaves, and our season is done.

Its so tiring, every bloody season, Gerrard, Suarez, Mane....nope its the same sh*t.

WHY DO WE BUY ONLY ONE GOOD PLAYER EACH TIME?

Surely to feck we can get one good player, then add another good player, then add another! Its not hard, its called progress, sod it, like Greenday call it, wheres my novacaine?

Lallana was pissing me off to be honest. Having a go at TAA, sulking when the ball wasn't played to him how he wanted it but then virtually every time he had the ball, he gave it away.

I don't think he had a go at TAA. When TAA  overhit the pass to the left wing Lallana was about to erupt but held back when he realised it was young Trent

Fair play to Southampton, they outplayed us over both legs.
I thought Romeu for them was outstanding and really marshalled the midfield as well as shielded the defence.
We were bereft of ideas, again moving sideways and building too slowly...and i think if we played another 90 minutes it would still not change the outcome.

We need to inject some pace into our attacking play urgently, coz its clear that if our midfield cannot break down a team within the first 45 mins, we are at risk of conceding everytime when we get desperate and overcommit.

That was a real pity, hopefully the team picks themselves up and get it right at the weekend and against Chelsea.

Fundamentals of attacking are lacking. Pass and move pass and move. We had pass and static or pass and run where a pass isn't on.

The lack of pace is a real concern. Apart from losing Mane - what has happenned to that side of our game ?

Sides are beginning to work out if you park 2 buses against us and give us the ball, we cant do anything with it

Lets just imagine that other sides get the "bus " treatment  which Im pretty sure they do . How do they cope or dont they ?
One thing for sure is that they get down the sides more with people who can cross. Our delivery from wide areas is woeful and has no pace whatsoever . If we dont get in front the more we panic and the more we try aimless shots or try playing through walls of players. Needs to change formation or personel whatever will help

I said pre match it'll be a difficult game. Teams have figured us out now. We're bloody great when the other team have the ball, we hunt them down in packs and force them into mistakes. Now though, the opposition says why don't you have the ball instead and we will put every man we have behind it. When that happens, we have no answers. All we do is pass sideways for 90 minutes and we don't go anywhere. We have no urgency to our play we aren't moving the ball quickly enough, we aren't creative and we have no plan B either. We're constantly playing it out from the back very very slowly and it's all too predictable and so easy to defend against. By the time our goalie rolls it out the other team have 11 men behind the ball.

Karius - Thought he played very well and made some really good saves. My motm.

TAA - Overall he played quite well, got forward and delivered one or two beauty's into the box too. He was caught out of position a couple of times though and we were lucky not to get punished, if that was Moreno he would have got slaughtered.

Lovren - Didn't do much wrong.

Matip - Same but noticed he lost possession quite a few times which isn't like him, a bit rusty perhaps.

Milner - Seemed jittery in the first 15 mins and made a couple of mistakes but settled and played ok after that.

Henderson - Did nothing for me. Thought he had a poor game.

Can - Surprised to see he has been given some votes because I thought he was poor too. He tracked back once or twice and won the ball back for us but apart from that I thought he was terrible. He slowed our play right down and gave the ball away.

Lallana - Worked the hardest out of the midfield 3.

Firmino - Hardly involved. Thought he had a poor game.

Coutinho - Got on the ball more than Firmino did but didn't create anything. Was unlucky with a 25 yard shot though.

Sturridge - big Sturridge fan and been calling for him to start for ages but thought he was terrible too, he just doesn't look interested. That said, our best chances probably fell to him.

Jürgen - it was evident early on that we were in for yet another frustrating night and we would struggle to find a goal. So tell me, why is Jürgen waiting until 75 mins to bring origi on? And why is he waiting until 85 mins to change our set up to a diamond midfield with wijnaldum?  Thought klopp got it all wrong tonight, has he not learnt anything from the past 4-5 weeks?

We've just blown a golden opportunity to get to Wembley there. Credit to Southampton who played very well in both legs, beat us in both legs, so well done to them I hope they win it. 

The Liverpool can do no wrong brigade will probably come on and say we should have had 9 penalties and our passing stats were 98.7% accurate or whatever, but the truth of the matter is we were sh*t once again. Tonight was identical to our previous 6 or 7 games.

Very disappointed.

F***ing spot on every time 👍

I said pre match it'll be a difficult game. Teams have figured us out now. We're bloody great when the other team have the ball, we hunt them down in packs and force them into mistakes. Now though, the opposition says why don't you have the ball instead and we will put every man we have behind it. When that happens, we have no answers. All we do is pass sideways for 90 minutes and we don't go anywhere. We have no urgency to our play we aren't moving the ball quickly enough, we aren't creative and we have no plan B either. We're constantly playing it out from the back very very slowly and it's all too predictable and so easy to defend against. By the time our goalie rolls it out the other team have 11 men behind the ball.

Karius - Thought he played very well and made some really good saves. My motm.

TAA - Overall he played quite well, got forward and delivered one or two beauty's into the box too. He was caught out of position a couple of times though and we were lucky not to get punished, if that was Moreno he would have got slaughtered.

Lovren - Didn't do much wrong.

Matip - Same but noticed he lost possession quite a few times which isn't like him, a bit rusty perhaps.

Milner - Seemed jittery in the first 15 mins and made a couple of mistakes but settled and played ok after that.

Henderson - Did nothing for me. Thought he had a poor game.

Can - Surprised to see he has been given some votes because I thought he was poor too. He tracked back once or twice and won the ball back for us but apart from that I thought he was terrible. He slowed our play right down and gave the ball away.

Lallana - Worked the hardest out of the midfield 3.

Firmino - Hardly involved. Thought he had a poor game.

Coutinho - Got on the ball more than Firmino did but didn't create anything. Was unlucky with a 25 yard shot though.

Sturridge - big Sturridge fan and been calling for him to start for ages but thought he was terrible too, he just doesn't look interested. That said, our best chances probably fell to him.

Jürgen - it was evident early on that we were in for yet another frustrating night and we would struggle to find a goal. So tell me, why is Jürgen waiting until 75 mins to bring origi on? And why is he waiting until 85 mins to change our set up to a diamond midfield with wijnaldum?  Thought klopp got it all wrong tonight, has he not learnt anything from the past 4-5 weeks?

We've just blown a golden opportunity to get to Wembley there. Credit to Southampton who played very well in both legs, beat us in both legs, so well done to them I hope they win it. 

The Liverpool can do no wrong brigade will probably come on and say we should have had 9 penalties and our passing stats were 98.7% accurate or whatever, but the truth of the matter is we were sh*t once again. Tonight was identical to our previous 6 or 7 games.

Very disappointed.

Good post.

We could have played them for another 90 minutes and not scored.

I know some tried to blame our poor form on our defence, but they were looking at the wrong end of the pitch where all our current problems are.

I honestly thought Jürgen could have managed this bliiiiiiip and shortened it's lifespan - perhaps after the (EDIT) munt game (which I honestly thought was a genuine turnaround in performance) but it's snowballed out of control since and he's clearly struggling with this right now.

Utter crap plus we now have a manager who thinks we play well when we don't, very worrying indeed. If Jürgen really thinks that was good play from us, to basically pass the ball side to side for 90 minutes, put in a series of easily defended corners and then on the very few chances we got we missed, then he is living in cloud cuckoo land. I'm becoming nervous for the future because when a whole team play badly then it usually points at management.
Oh well we still have the scramble for 5th place to enjoy

Well played Southampton

By far the better team over the two legs, 2 - 0 aggregate score didn't do them justices

The only bright side is how well our goalie played. If it wasn't for Karius we could of been beat by 5 /6 goals over the two legs

Good post.

We could have played them for another 90 minutes and not scored.

I know some tried to blame our poor form on our defence, but they were looking at the wrong end of the pitch where all our current problems are.

I honestly thought Jürgen could have managed this bliiiiiiip and shortened it's lifespan - perhaps after the Plymouth game but it's snowballed out of control since and he's clearly struggling with this right now.

Clearly we lacked a bit of width, because we lacked passing options in the final third and no one was wide in space to receive passes.

What Klopp should have done is signed another winger. His formation is built around wingers and at the moment we have none (Mane being in AFCON). Firmino is never a winger, he is useless there and it's only masking his strengths and exposing his weaknesses. Play him up top or centrally, let him do what he does best, as a free roaming central player. Sturridge lacking spark that made him a very good player, but that's because he isn't given a run of games and every time he plays a game and scores a goal, he gets dropped the next game (ala Robbie Keane with Rafa, didn't do well with Keane's confidence). 

I don't buy this ''teams figured us out'' argument, if you have a balanced team that works in a formation and players compliment each other then it will be difficult to ''figure us out''. At the moment we lack a lot of quality and as soon we address those problems the better.

Congratulations to Southampton

Lacking creativity in midfield, simple as.

Henderson, Can, Wijnaldum - not good enough.

Look at the midfielders in the teams around us in the league at the minute - Matic, Ozil, Carzola, De Bruyne, Silva, Eriksen.

Any player of that skill level in place of Wijnaldum or Can this season and we'd be a few points closer to Chelsea.

Lacking creativity in midfield, simple as.

Henderson, Can, Wijnaldum - not good enough.

Look at the midfielders in the teams around us in the league at the minute - Matic, Ozil, Carzola, De Bruyne, Silva, Eriksen.

Any player of that skill level in place of Wijnaldum or Can this season and we'd be a few points closer to Chelsea.

Well we do have Coutinho and Lallana as creative AM's.

It's the likes of Kante, Fernandinho, Matip, Dembele or Alli we need in CM.

Two things that I would like to point out... (a) They (Southampton) scoring last night made little or no difference to the game over the two legs we simple were not at the races...(b) For me what was so woeful about their goal (remember screaming it at the PC at the time) was when they picked up the ball and moved towards the half way line was the way our defenders backed off and kept backing off...

Also felt that Henderson should have moved to cover Shane Long a lot earlier and that Lovern should have moved to cover the area Henderson was trying to cover (Hindsight)

What are you on about? He was a lot better than Hendo and Lallana. Plus he was the first to be subbed, so vent your anger elsewhere ffs.

What F***ing game were you watching?
Definitely not the one we were, obviously

Since the demise of SG we have no one left in that team for when the going gets tough , no one who has the will or the skill to get down and dirty,

I get it when people say Klopp is making subs to late but in all honesty I don't see one player on the bench who can come on and get your hairs up thinking he's going to change the game it's same as or worse , this is a hard working team but not a stand out team , the fault line of this team has been found out , and once one did it their all at it , defend deep give us the ball then hit us on the counter ,
I expect  Klopp to figure it out but by then the season could be over ,I hope not  if all we get out of this season is top four that's failure for me ,even getting it could be suicide  as that will mean more games we need some serious squad additions  to even think we can tangle with the big guns in Europe , this team needs a big hitter go get us one Jürgen ,

Two things that I would like to point out... (a) They (Southampton) scoring last night made little or no difference to the game over the two legs we simple were not at the races...(b) For me what was so woeful about their goal (remember screaming it at the PC at the time) was when they picked up the ball and moved towards the half way line was the way our defenders backed off and kept backing off...

Also felt that Henderson should have moved to cover Shane Long a lot earlier and that Lovern should have moved to cover the area Henderson was trying to cover (Hindsight)

It was like the Monty Python Life of Brian film when the centurions came under attack and the order to 'run away, run away' was always given.

The movie was funny. 

I will tell you one thing - Sturridge is no longer pacy - he looks terrified of pulling a hammy.

Apart from our keepers everyone is out of form bar firmino

We need an international break